It’s nothing unusual to participate in a service project that benefits the community while on a short-term mission trip—in fact, that’s what one would hope for.

But Experience Mission is taking that model a step further. While partner community needs have always been taken heavily into consideration, EM has started an increased effort to let local community leaders determine the specific projects they need and see what can be done to support those needs, even if they fall outside the scope of a traditional short-term mission trip.

For example, in Jamaica this past summer, residents said they needed help building two new kindergartens. In Costa Rica the year before, residents of the village of Coroma said they needed a suspension bridge.

The idea, EM Executive Director Chris Clum said, is to make a more practical impact in residents’ lives and to inspire them toward a greater sense of ownership regarding community improvement efforts.

Clum said one concern has been making sure that such centralized projects do not take away from one-on-one time with community members—time that is practically guaranteed if home repair and construction comprises the majority of the work. But as it has turned out thus far, the inclusion of larger community projects has allowed for plenty of personal interaction.

“We’re actually engaging the community more, because we’re impacting more people’s lives,” Clum said.

Clum mentioned the schools built in Jamaica.

There, in the small rural town of Catadupa and nearby villages, Pastor Leroy Gordon of the Christian Fellowship Church and community members have maximized minimal government funding and led an effort to run community-based kindergartens for children between three and six years old. The classes of between 20 and 30 children are held in small churches without indoor plumbing; the children use pit toilets outside. The facilities were extremely basic, but they got by.

But newly imposed government regulations forced them out of those facilities and—if they wanted to continue holding kindergarten classes—required them to construct new buildings. The community of Catadupa, he said, would have to provide the government with blueprints designed by an architect. The process cost money the community didn’t have.

“What we have to do is hire people–skilled men–you are dealing now with a proper building,” Gordon said.

At that point, a grant from Canada-based S.O.S. became crucial, as did EM’s large volunteer teams. Gordon said the combination of the donation and enough manpower made it possible to make significant progress on the buildings, and this helped rally the community together.

“There was a tremendous sense of ownership in Jamaica,” Clum said. “This was their project, and we were just coming to help them with their project. The workers there were going to continue on.”

(Click here to read more about the school construction effort there.)

There was similar participation in Coroma, Costa Rica, the year before. The suspension bridge volunteers built would allow children to get the school and the elderly to seek medical care in those cases when the river there rose. Knowing this, community members took time off work to volunteer and took turns cooking for the volunteer teams.

Selecting projects like these does not, Clum said, mean that mission trips won’t involve plenty of spiritual outreach.

“The spiritual needs aren’t going to be met unless we’re connecting and engaging with people. So whatever we’re doing during the week, we have to involve interacting with people,” Clum said. He said if work projects don’t lend themselves to a great deal of interaction, a trip might incorporate outreach programs such as community barbeques, additional Kids Club activities or supporting Meals on Wheels programs in urban communities.

Clum said allowing the community to determine what the work projects will be is an important component of EM’s burgeoning Community Affiliate Program, in which community leaders are identified to work with residents toward year-round change, as opposed to solely relying on outside involvement during the summer months.

“The ownership rests in the community. Our role at EM is to help them connect to opportunities, resources and networks,” Clum said. “If one component is that they want teams to come down, then that’s great, but it’s part of their thing. And if it is one of those components—and we assume that it will be—then we bring the labor and the materials down there, and we go down to help them. It’s exactly flipped around, and exactly as it should be.”

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call  360-732-0986  to learn more.